Life after Traumatic Brain Injury

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I didn’t want to write this, I didn’t have it in me. My brainiversary blog posts are normally fairly upbeat affairs with a nice message and a catchy poem or quote. But in all honesty since July I’ve been feeling anything but jaunty. I didn’t really want to start my next year of recovery on a bum note but here I am.

I then realised that it’s ok to not be ok and it’s even more ok to express that. There are loads of us who are not ok right now. To pretend I’m something that I am most definitely not right now does myself and others a disservice. I’m not entirely sure where this post will end up, so I’m just going to write and see what happens.

The duvet of safety has become my home once more as about 95% of my time since July has been spent underneath it, gestating or incubating or whatever else is boring and still. I’ve got up when I’ve needed to attend something such as my PIP tribunal (which incidentally, I won) but gone straight back to doing my best impression of a plank of wood as soon as I get home. Even the sweet victory at my tribunal got buried underneath the layers of bleurgh that currently hover around my atmosphere.

There are many reasons for the reappearance of my ennui and despair, some that I can put my finger on, others that are hidden within the folds of my temporal lobe (some brain lingo for you there). One of the obvious reasons is that my brain is damaged, mood change 101 right there. Other reasons are the upcoming anniversary that always chirps in, a longer than usual bout of fatigue and a pervasive feeling of stress that is hanging around. There are other reasons that are making me particularly vulnerable due to factors mentioned above. This is stuff that just makes me break inside and feel impotent because I can’t help. When I’m low like this my shell is fragile and I just can’t cope with anything, I know all the advice about worrying about things only within my realm of control but there are times such as now when my faith in myself and humanity goes missing.

I feel so trapped at the moment, trapped by my body that won’t do what I want it to do, trapped by the ignorance and stupidity of others, trapped by society, trapped by the benefit system, trapped, trapped, trapped. There just seems to have been a huge tidal wave of what I will call ‘shite’ that makes my heart hurt. Are you ready for the list of ‘what is currently making Braingirl angry and sad’? Ok, here goes; The selfish actions of farmers in Hurricane Florence territory who despite having 2 weeks warning about the flooding, decided to lock all their animals in cages and leave them to drown in the flood (current estimate is 3.4 million lives) all treated like commodities they can claim on the insurance because we think we own sentient creatures. Hambacher Forest, a 12,000 year old forest in Germany, home to 142 species regarded as important to conservation, casually being torn down right now by a company called RWE for coal mining. The badger cull being rolled out across the UK, where farmers are being offered money to catch and shoot badgers in the head for no concrete scientific reason. Kaporos festival in New York, basically a chicken slaughter festival where thousands of lives are taken and dumped on the streets all in the name of religion. Then finding out 5 species of bird have recently gone extinct in the Amazon due to clearance for animal grazing for an effing beef burger (I’m looking at you MuckDonalds and you can shove your new vegan burger up your golden arches). If this doesn’t make you angry then you’re not paying attention.

This my friends was all in the month of September. This stuff goes on and on and on and yet we still as a society do absolutely nothing (and those that do get the most hideous abuse on social media by people who think ‘bacon tho’ is a clever and intelligent response to a call for compassion). Well I’m fed up mateys, totally fed up. I want to join the Hunt sabs but I can’t, my brain won’t let me, I want to go to protests, but I can’t, my brain won’t let me. I want to liberate animals, but I can’t, my brain won’t let me. All I can do is the moral baseline of being vegan and supporting those that CAN do what I can’t. I can’t be silent anymore. If you’re on Instagram follow @thesavemovement @animalliberationfront @unoffensiveanimal @undergroundbadgersyndicate show them some love and support for being on the frontline.

I massively digressed there but after more than 2 months of inertia and frustration getting that out was very therapeutic! Where do I go from here? I try to reason with myself and give myself that pep talk about feeling what I feel and being kind to myself and all that jazz, so here I am, with you, feeling my feelings. Despite everything I am usually fairly upbeat and progressive, I usually have an inordinate amount of hope in the goodness of humans but right now I want to give everyone a bloody good rattle, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!

I went to my homie (am I too old to say homie?) Rumi for some good talk, here’s what he told me.

How appropriate for just after the Autumn Equinox, dead leaves a-dropping all over the place. I suppose for my 6 year brainiversary it’s time to let the dead leaves drop, time to drop toxic people, toxic mindsets, toxic habits, drop sitting in my own insecurities about how I’m received and if it offends people and start to speak my truth. I need it and my furry, feathered and scaled brethren REALLY need it. Face year 7 in its face, stop stirring your own stew Braingirl and rule your world from your bed if you have to.

P.s. A small candle of good news this month was that I passed my final Horticulture exams with a commendation. All that work was worth it.

This song has been percolating around my noggin for weeks, here, you have it.